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Record W2124662483 · doi:10.22329/il.v30i2.2868

Why Fallacies Appear to be Better Arguments Than They Are

2010· article· en· W2124662483 on OpenAlexaffvenue
Douglas Walton

Bibliographic record

VenueInformal Logic · 2010
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicEpistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Windsor
Fundersnot available
KeywordsArgumentation theoryArgument (complex analysis)HeuristicsAppealDefeasible estateEpistemologyJumpScheme (mathematics)Mathematical economicsPsychologyComputer sciencePositive economicsMathematicsPhilosophyEconomicsLawPolitical scienceMathematical optimizationPhysics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This paper offers a solution to the problem of understanding how a fallacious argument can be deceptive by “seeming to be valid”, or (better) appearing to be a better argument of its kind than it really is. The explanation of how fallacies are deceptive is based on heuristics and paraschemes. Heuristics are fast and frugal shortcuts to a solution to a problem that sometimes jump to a conclusion that is not justified. In fallacious instances, according to the theory proposed, this jump overlooks prerequisites of the defeasible argumentation scheme for the type of argument in question. Three informal fallacies, argumentum ad verecundiam, argumentum ad ignorantiam and fear appeal argument, are used to illustrate and explain the theory.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.022
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.104
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.022
Threshold uncertainty score0.114

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0220.104
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.001
Bibliometrics0.0050.003
Science and technology studies0.0060.021
Scholarly communication0.0120.028
Open science0.0020.007
Research integrity0.0080.008
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0130.003

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.061
GPT teacher head0.262
Teacher spread0.201 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations26
Published2010
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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